Certainly we should all have been paying more attention to Neil Postman, but I could not help but hear Saruman speaking to Gandalf while reading the end of that Compact article.
Certainly we should all have been paying more attention to Neil Postman, but I could not help but hear Saruman speaking to Gandalf while reading the end of that Compact article.
I liked how the article started out. Agriculture is a pretty illustrative example of why we can't return to the past. But then the author turned to abstract generalities and kind of lost me.
I haven't read Postman -- is he worth reading nowadays? From summaries, I don't see much to disagree with in his work.
My take is that there's little value in trying to fight technologies that increase the productivity of our work. But, while it's hard, there's a lot of value in resisting, or at least moderating, the technologies that we use in our off time. And the more people around us are on the same page, the better this works. If your kids are the only ones in their school that aren't on social media, you're going to have quite a time.
It's also important to understand that most of the social changes we on the right bemoan are more a matter of technological disruption than some top-down scheme implemented by the left. Or, even if the precise symptoms of the disease were shaped by leftist thought, it was technology that rendered the old ways so vulnerable and unappealing.
Certainly we should all have been paying more attention to Neil Postman, but I could not help but hear Saruman speaking to Gandalf while reading the end of that Compact article.
I liked how the article started out. Agriculture is a pretty illustrative example of why we can't return to the past. But then the author turned to abstract generalities and kind of lost me.
I haven't read Postman -- is he worth reading nowadays? From summaries, I don't see much to disagree with in his work.
My take is that there's little value in trying to fight technologies that increase the productivity of our work. But, while it's hard, there's a lot of value in resisting, or at least moderating, the technologies that we use in our off time. And the more people around us are on the same page, the better this works. If your kids are the only ones in their school that aren't on social media, you're going to have quite a time.
It's also important to understand that most of the social changes we on the right bemoan are more a matter of technological disruption than some top-down scheme implemented by the left. Or, even if the precise symptoms of the disease were shaped by leftist thought, it was technology that rendered the old ways so vulnerable and unappealing.
Amusing Ourselves to Death is very much worth reading. Consider the sociological implications of even technology like a clockтАж